In una fase di profonda trasformazione dei governi locali, in cui alle tradizionali difficoltà legate alla scarsità di risorse e alla complessa gestione dei servizi pubblici si aggiungono nuove polemiche sui costi della politica, i... more
In una fase di profonda trasformazione dei governi locali, in cui alle tradizionali difficoltà legate alla scarsità di risorse e alla complessa gestione dei servizi pubblici si aggiungono nuove polemiche sui costi della politica, i comuni, in particolare quelli di piccole e medie dimensioni, sono messi alla prova da crescenti vincoli e pressioni. La cooperazione tra comuni, o intercomunalità – fenomeno in crescita a livello europeo – è una risposta a queste sfide. La gestione comune di funzioni e servizi permette agli enti locali di operare in maniera più razionale ed efficiente, erogando servizi di migliore qualità su un territorio e a una popolazione più ampi. L’Emilia-Romagna è una delle regioni italiane che più ha mostrato interesse per questa opportunità, soprattutto attraverso la forma delle unioni di comuni. Il volume, dopo aver ricostruito le problematiche teoriche dell’intercomunalità a livello europeo e nella realtà italiana, analizza tre casi di unioni di comuni in Emilia-Romagna con l’obiettivo di esaminarne – nei processi di governo, nella gestione delle politiche pubbliche, negli aspetti normativi, organizzativi, operativi e politici – i tratti comuni e le sfide condivise, ma anche le rispettive peculiarità . Il volume permette quindi di comprendere il significato di questa nuova esperienza amministrativa, la più dinamica innovazione istituzionale sia nel governo locale emiliano-romagnolo, sia nel pano rama nazionale.
In una fase di profonda trasformazione dei governi locali, in cui alle tradizionali difficoltà legate alla scarsità di risorse e alla complessa gestione dei servizi pubblici si aggiungono nuove polemiche sui costi della politica, i... more
In una fase di profonda trasformazione dei governi locali, in cui alle tradizionali difficoltà legate alla scarsità di risorse e alla complessa gestione dei servizi pubblici si aggiungono nuove polemiche sui costi della politica, i comuni, in particolare quelli di piccole e medie dimensioni, sono messi alla prova da crescenti vincoli e pressioni. La cooperazione tra comuni, o intercomunalità – fenomeno in crescita a livello europeo – è una risposta a queste sfide. La gestione comune di funzioni e servizi permette agli enti locali di operare in maniera più razionale ed efficiente, erogando servizi di migliore qualità su un territorio e a una popolazione più ampi. L’Emilia-Romagna è una delle regioni italiane che più ha mostrato interesse per questa opportunità, soprattutto attraverso la forma delle unioni di comuni. Il volume, dopo aver ricostruito le problematiche teoriche dell’intercomunalità a livello europeo e nella realtà italiana, analizza tre casi di unioni di comuni in Emilia-Romagna con l’obiettivo di esaminarne – nei processi di governo, nella gestione delle politiche pubbliche, negli aspetti normativi, organizzativi, operativi e politici – i tratti comuni e le sfide condivise, ma anche le rispettive peculiarità . Il volume permette quindi di comprendere il significato di questa nuova esperienza amministrativa, la più dinamica innovazione istituzionale sia nel governo locale emiliano-romagnolo, sia nel pano rama nazionale.
Over the last two decades, several reforms have introduced electoral systems that cannot be classified along the proportional/majoritarian divide. Indeed, two of the leading experts on the subject have gone so far as to say that the drive... more
Over the last two decades, several reforms have introduced electoral systems that cannot be classified along the proportional/majoritarian divide. Indeed, two of the leading experts on the subject have gone so far as to say that the drive towards ‘mixed’ systems ‘holds out the promise of being the electoral reform of the 21st century’ (Shugart and Wattenberg, 2001a: xxi). According to the classification criteria used by Golder (2005: 114), as many as 15.3 per cent of the world’s democratic legislative elections, in the 1990s, took place with some kind of mixed system (as compared to 2–4 per cent in the three previous decades). Indeed, if one looks at the electoral reforms adopted since the fall of the Berlin Wall, most of them are associated with systems that mix components of the majoritarian and proportional families.
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... relazioni internazionali FULVIO ATTINÀ La Pesc: una politica comune «fuori dal comune» 223 VITTORIO EMANUELE PARSI Europa e Stati Uniti: è finito il grande freddo? 249 Riferimenti bibliografici 275 Notizie sugli autori 295 Appendice... more
... relazioni internazionali FULVIO ATTINÀ La Pesc: una politica comune «fuori dal comune» 223 VITTORIO EMANUELE PARSI Europa e Stati Uniti: è finito il grande freddo? 249 Riferimenti bibliografici 275 Notizie sugli autori 295 Appendice 299 Page 11. GIANFRANCO BALDINI ...
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In Chapter 3, we have placed the 2RS together with SMP and the alternative vote. This choice is justified by structural isomorphism, namely the same electoral formula and the same district magnitude. Isomorphism, however does not imply... more
In Chapter 3, we have placed the 2RS together with SMP and the alternative vote. This choice is justified by structural isomorphism, namely the same electoral formula and the same district magnitude. Isomorphism, however does not imply the same mechanics and outcomes, at least as far as the 2RS legislative version is concerned. Since the latter is the only relevant one for our purposes (i.e. testing Duverger’s propositions),1 the topic requires an extensive reassessment. In our opinion, indeed, the accounts provided so far by most of the literature are far from exhaustive or satisfying; and their failures concern the explanation of both the number and type of parties the system allows for, which are two crucial questions for any comparative study of the effects of electoral rules.
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In a recent review on the topic of this book, an influential scholar proposes the following account: In the span of less than twenty years, the field of comparative electoral systems research has gone from being ‘underdeveloped’… to being... more
In a recent review on the topic of this book, an influential scholar proposes the following account: In the span of less than twenty years, the field of comparative electoral systems research has gone from being ‘underdeveloped’… to being a mature field of study. This does not mean that all of our questions have been answered — or even asked yet. What it means is that we now have a large number of scholars who make the study of electoral systems one of their principal areas of work, and many more who include electoral system variables as an element in research on broader topics. It also means that we have largely settled some of the core questions of the field — notably the relation between various electoral system variables and the number of parties and proportionality — and that these findings have been, to a significant degree, incorporated into mainstream political science. In fact, I will go so far as to say that the agenda of proportionality and number of parties is largely closed … Presumably there will continue to be fine-tuning, and the possibility of a theoretical breakthrough that we cannot now anticipate always remains. However, I would urge scholars of electoral systems to pursue new agendas.
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What are electoral systems? A broad definition would include the set of rules which — from the distinction between active and passive electorates to access to TV, from the rules for the presentation of lists and candidates to the... more
What are electoral systems? A broad definition would include the set of rules which — from the distinction between active and passive electorates to access to TV, from the rules for the presentation of lists and candidates to the regulation of campaigning (see, in comparative perspective Rose, 2000a) — are concerned with all the important legal aspects of elections. But this broad definition is more appropriate for election laws than for electoral systems. Electoral laws include all the important provisions that regulate the electoral process. As recent research has underlined, even limiting the spectrum to some 60 democracies, there are today significant differences in one or more of the rules that regulate democratic elections around the world (Massicotte et al., 2004). The six dimensions chosen in that study are the following: the right to vote, the right to be a candidate, the electoral register, the agency in charge of the election, the procedure for casting votes, and the procedure to sort out the winners and losers. Clearly, all these topics are fundamental for regulating the democratic course of an election. However, it is on the last two dimensions that the study of electoral systems focuses. How people vote and who wins or loses: these are the two crucial questions around which a growing literature has been developing over the last two decades, since Arend Lijphart lamented the scarcity of studies on this topic (Lijphart, 1985).
Brexit has brought tensions in European and (especially) British politics. This article illustrates the rationale, scope and research questions of the special issue, which investigates the first Brexit effects in the five years following... more
Brexit has brought tensions in European and (especially) British politics. This article illustrates the rationale, scope and research questions of the special issue, which investigates the first Brexit effects in the five years following the 2016 referendum. Taking the distribution of political power as our primary focus and analysing mainly – though not exclusively – British politics, we trace the first developments in the three domains of politics, polity and policy since the UK’s decision to leave the EU. In the politics domain, after the political uncertainties surrounding the referendum period, we detect a return to the power-hoarding dynamics typical of the Westminster model. However, the territorial and constitutional architectures of the British polity are under considerable strain, with Brexit strengthening the nationalistic movements in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In the policy domain, despite strong common interests, Brexit has failed to produce cooperative EU–UK arran...
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This article investigates the impact of Brexit on the British political system. By critically engaging with the conceptualisation of the Westminster model proposed by Arend Lijphart, it analyses the strains of Brexit on three dimensions... more
This article investigates the impact of Brexit on the British political system. By critically engaging with the conceptualisation of the Westminster model proposed by Arend Lijphart, it analyses the strains of Brexit on three dimensions developed from from Lijphart’s framework: elections and the party system, executive– legislative dynamics and the relationship between central and devolved administrations. Supplementing quantitative indicators with an in-depth qualitative analysis, the article shows that the process of Brexit has ultimately reaffirmed, with some important caveats, key features of the Westminster model: the resilience of the two-party system, executive dominance over Parliament and the unitary character of the political system. Inheriting a context marked by the progressive weakening of key majoritarian features of the political system, the Brexit process has brought back some of the traditional executive power-hoarding dynamics. Yet, this prevailing trend has create...
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The majority view within political science is that populism is best understood as a (thin) ideology. We problematize the ideational approach by broadening the scope of analysis, linking populism to the rise of long-term generalized... more
The majority view within political science is that populism is best understood as a (thin) ideology. We problematize the ideational approach by broadening the scope of analysis, linking populism to the rise of long-term generalized anti-political sentiments, against interpretations that tend to tie the populist wave to conjunctural factors related to recent crises. We argue that the essence of populism lies at the intersection of the ‘material constitution’ of advanced industrial democracies (that is, how macroeconomic governance relates to democratic decision-making) and the feelings of societal alienation that are at the heart of anti-political sentiments. We show the peculiar coexistence of economic turbulence, heralded by the crisis of the cartel party and of the neoliberal economic consensus, and an appeal to a post-democratic ‘virtual politics’ of performed but ineffectual popular sovereignty. The policies of the populist coalition governing Italy in 2018–19 provide a key case...
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Cet article propose une lecture croisee de quatre ouvrages recents consacres au systeme politique britannique : deux livres en nom propre analysant les problemes de la democratie representative et du mode de gouvernement de la... more
Cet article propose une lecture croisee de quatre ouvrages recents consacres au systeme politique britannique : deux livres en nom propre analysant les problemes de la democratie representative et du mode de gouvernement de la Grande-Bretagne ; deux ouvrages collectifs traitant de l’impact du gouvernement de coalition et des elections generales de 2015. Ces lectures critiques nous permettent de reperer trois points de tension dans la democratie britannique, exacerbes par le referendum de 2016 sur l’appartenance a l’Union europeenne : une tension liee a la question de la souverainete, entre democratie representative et democratie directe ; une tension « territoriale », entre les pays constitutifs du Royaume-Uni ; et une tension « organisationnelle » au sein des principaux partis. Apres avoir replace le cas britannique dans un cadre comparatif europeen, nous nous concentrons sur les defis lies a la question de la representation et au modele de Westminster : la capacite croissante des citoyens a s’imposer dans l’espace politique et les reponses changeantes apportees a la question de R. Dahl : « Qui gouverne ? » ; les logiques du pouvoir du Premier ministre, pendant et apres la coalition ; la politique de « valence » dans la competition electorale, en contraste avec celle de l’arene referendaire. Nous degageons enfin quelques conclusions sur la nature profonde de ces tensions et les incertitudes qu’elles soulevent quant a l’avenir de la democratie britannique.
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The article explores a key aspect in the development of contemporary European populist parties: the celebrity dynamics of their leadership. It presents a systematic comparison of leaders from the main populist parties, exploring the... more
The article explores a key aspect in the development of contemporary European populist parties: the celebrity dynamics of their leadership. It presents a systematic comparison of leaders from the main populist parties, exploring the correlation between leadership visibility, fame, and the ideological and organisational characteristics of parties. Furthermore, it investigates the subset of leaders whose public notoriety predates their political involvement, with a view to establishing how they balance the demands of political responsibility and authenticity of character, both in terms of organisational control and communicative strategy. Analytically, the study helps illuminate the mechanisms through which populist parties adapt to participation in the political game while continuing to mark their ideological difference. Empirically, the findings highlight the uniqueness of an outlier case, Beppe Grillo’s leadership of Italy’s Five-Star Movement, in which celebrity is leveraged into ...
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ABSTRACT This article analyses the claims for national sovereignty made in the British Conservative and Labour parties. In Britain, national sovereignism has been embedded within an entrenched tradition of Euroscepticism, whereas populist... more
ABSTRACT This article analyses the claims for national sovereignty made in the British Conservative and Labour parties. In Britain, national sovereignism has been embedded within an entrenched tradition of Euroscepticism, whereas populist claims have periodically punctuated the discourse of both main parties, before emerging with more vocal tones during the discussion on Brexit. While most sovereigntist claims share some degree of populism, we reserve the populist label for what we identify as explicitly populist claims (as opposed to four other categories of sovereignism). After presenting a historical recall of the main dynamics of sovereigntist claims in British politics, we hypothesise that different types of sovereigntist discourses feature in the major British parties. While ‘nationalist-populist’ sovereignism should prevail in the Conservative party, we expect ‘economic’ sovereignism to be the form mainly used by the Labour party. Systematically analysing the debates in the House of Commons on all divisions on the EU from the 2015 General Election to the end of October 2017, we show that significant differences on the use of sovereignist claims exist both within and across British parties. We find that national populist claims dominate among Tory MPs and civic sovereignism prevails over economic sovereignism among Labour members.
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In a frequently quoted statement, Giovanni Sartori (1968: 273, 1994: ix) defines electoral systems as ‘the most specific manipulative instrument of politics’. This chapter, and the next two, will introduce, discuss and amend the... more
In a frequently quoted statement, Giovanni Sartori (1968: 273, 1994: ix) defines electoral systems as ‘the most specific manipulative instrument of politics’. This chapter, and the next two, will introduce, discuss and amend the theoretical literature on such ‘manipulations’. More to the point, we will focus on the predicted effects of electoral systems and on the related conditions, as well as on the operationalization of the relevant independent and dependent variables. This will in turn set the appropriate context within which to verify whether, and to what extent, predicted effects have materialized, and/or have varied, in our sample of 21 democracies through the post-war period.
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The presentation of the debate about electoral systems through the previous chapters has been supported by a number of examples and by anticipations of empirical data. Most quoted information and data come from the main available... more
The presentation of the debate about electoral systems through the previous chapters has been supported by a number of examples and by anticipations of empirical data. Most quoted information and data come from the main available theoretical contributions, namely Duverger, Cox and Sartori, whose works also provide model qualitative comparative tests of electoral rules’ effects. While we highly value the latter, our focus here will be a systematic quantitative test, of the kind pioneered by Rae (1967) and brought to maturity by Lijphart’s (1994a) research. Indeed, the latter work will be our own reference point, though we will introduce more than a few changes in its research design, indicators and independent variables, and — as a consequence — will end up with partly different, and some new, conclusions.
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The tests of Chapter 9 have confirmed a cornerstone of the laws on electoral systems (i.e. the threshold’s role), but have also introduced a new explanatory variable (volatility), that brings significant qualifications and adjustments to... more
The tests of Chapter 9 have confirmed a cornerstone of the laws on electoral systems (i.e. the threshold’s role), but have also introduced a new explanatory variable (volatility), that brings significant qualifications and adjustments to that role. Such qualifications and adjustments, in turn, are of no small consequence for the laws themselves, for the prospects of political engineering and for the theory and the practice of democratic representation. The following pages will focus on the salient facets of these consequences and the new challenges they pose to the working of electoral rules.
The article assesses some of the most important developments in research on populism, broadly conceived as expression of populist leaders, styles, ideologies. After the first section on the interconnections between populism, liberalism... more
The article assesses some of the most important developments in research on populism, broadly conceived as expression of populist leaders, styles, ideologies. After the first section on the interconnections between populism, liberalism and democracy, Western Europe is chosen as the appropriate context for the following comparative analysis. The main aim of the article is to critically assess the most recent conceptual and empirical researches in order to achieve sound methods for future empirical research. The focus on ‘mechanisms’ shows the extent to which research in this sector is still in its infancy. I argue that to understand the emergence of populism one needs to start from the increasing vulnerability of many European party systems. In the conclusion I also argue that the emerging literature on the quality of democracy can provide the best means to assess the impact of populism in contemporary Europe.
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This article comments a recent article by M. Flinders on the Problem with Democracy, recently published in this journal, with two main aims. The first is to identify some indicators that can be used to assess comparatively the... more
This article comments a recent article by M. Flinders on the Problem with Democracy, recently published in this journal, with two main aims. The first is to identify some indicators that can be used to assess comparatively the significance of some of the seven problems identified by the author. Then, having classified the latter in three main streams, the article focuses on two of them, which I call respectively the ‘representative linkage’ and ‘governance mechanisms’. My argument is that the health of democracy is related to complex balancing acts, whose dynamics emerge in a long-term perspective, which allows some myths of ‘golden ages’ to be identified.
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... (3) Per il regionalismo le analisi sono ancora più complicate dal fatto che si usa lo stesso ... TAB. 2 Elezioni autonomiche in Catalogna (confronto tra 2003 e 2006) ... Oltre al riconoscimento della nazione catalana, si ri-chiedeva... more
... (3) Per il regionalismo le analisi sono ancora più complicate dal fatto che si usa lo stesso ... TAB. 2 Elezioni autonomiche in Catalogna (confronto tra 2003 e 2006) ... Oltre al riconoscimento della nazione catalana, si ri-chiedeva nello statuto un sistema giudiziario autonomo, all'in-...